Metaphysics and the Modern World

Metaphysics and the Modern World makes the abiding questions of the nature of the self world and God available for the modern reader. Donald Phillip Verene presents these questions in both their systematic and historical dimensions beginning with Aristotles claim in his Metaphysics that philosophy begins in wonder. The first three chapters concern the origin of metaphysics as the transformation of the conception of reality in ancient Greek mythology the ontological argument as the basis of Christian metaphysics and the Renaissance cosmology of infinite worlds and the coincidence of contraries. The final four chapters present the central issues of the metaphysics of history through the New Science of Vico the principle of true infinity of Hegels Logic the dialectic of spirit and life in Cassirers Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms and the conception of actual entities and God in Whiteheads Process and Reality. In these discussions the reader will find a lively and learned account of a field of philosophy that is often thought difficult to access but in this work becomes most accessible and a pleasure to read. This book worthily complements Donald Verenes Moral Philosophy and the Modern World. Reading these works of Verene has a restorative effect in a philosophical sense. We find an invigorating witness to a properly measured confidence in the vocation of philosophy. This current book does not disappoint one on this score. Against often thoughtless rejections and misconceived critiques of metaphysics this book renews the ancient and ever new perplexities of philosophy. It does this by mindful engagement with a group of great thinkers ancient and modern who have been companions in Verenes own participation in the long conversation of the philosophical tradition. An impressive work seeking the knowledge of things human and divine. Very highly recommended. --William Desmond Professor of Philosophy Institute of Philosophy KU Leuven Belgium; David Cook Chair in Philosophy Villanova University USA With the astonishing erudition we have come to expect from him Professor Verene has produced an extraordinary essay on metaphysics in the European tradition. From Plato and Aristotle Anselm and Cusanus Vico and Hegel to Cassirer and Whitehead he shows how metaphysics in the sense of thinking the whole or thinking being rests upon mythic imagination as mediated by poetry including both within itself as reformed by reason. He has served us ancient wisdom made fresh and compelling. --Robert Cummings Neville Professor of Philosophy Religion and Theology Boston University; Author of Nurture in Time and Eternity Donald Phillip Verene is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy and director of the Institute for Vico Studies at Emory University. His previous books include Hegels Absolute (2007) Speculative Philosophy (2009) The Origins of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (2011) Moral Philosophy and the Modern World (2013) and Vicos New Science (2015). He has been Visiting Fellow at Oxford University and is Fellow of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei Rome.